There’s a great Cal Bear fan club in Sacramento called the Sac Grid Club. It goes waaaaay back in Cal’s history when fans/alumni were allowed to recruit and so Cal had a grid of clubs up and down the west coast. Just a few of them are still in existence and have morphed from being an arm of the recruiting department to being independent fan clubs.

In any case, every week they bring in surprisingly good speakers including Sandy Barbour once a year. I don’t often make it to the meetings because I generally have a conflict at Church on Wednesday evenings. But since it just so happens I was free yesterday and Sandy was the planned speaker, I couldn’t resist going. (Ironically, they still had a name-tag for me, one that said “Guest speaker” since the last time I was there it was to speak as a Rivals reporter.)

If you’ve never heard Sandy speak in a small setting, I suggest finding a time to do so. She is very personable. She’s a very good fit for Cal. You can’t help but like her and her sense of humor and her general honesty.

Here are some highlights from her talk:

The number of night games is a concern of both her and our new chancellor. Investigations are under way to see how much it would cost to “buy back” some of the flexibility we sold/allowed the TV networks to schedule so many night games. However, she cautioned that a number of the other Pac-12 presidents aren’t so upset about it. She said only Arizona is truly in our camp. But it was apparent to me she thinks that if the number of dollars lost is small enough to fix the problem, she believes the other schools will come on board.

In regards to academics, she spoke at length about the lag in the APR and GSR numbers and what they reflect. She talked about the steps already taken to fix the problem. She expects the basketball numbers to rebound significantly next year but there will be one more bad year for the football team based on the delay/averaging effects. She shared some of what the new numbers that will be replacing the old numbers will be in the future and they are quite encouraging. She specifically said she apologizes, that it is her responsibility and she expects better, just like we do.

She clarified that the issue with academics isn’t that kids are flunking classes but that they are not completing their degrees, that the complete their eligibility and then just disappear, evening going so far as to not complete the spring semester that is covered by their scholarship. She said the number of kids who have flunked out of school or have been academically ineligible has been small. Obviously that is true of the GSR, which is specifically tied to graduation, but I was a bit curious as to how that applies to the APR, which explicitly doesn’t require graduation (it’s one of the criticisms of it). Maybe the seniors who aren’t completing their spring semester are a big part… although it feels a bit dubious. Frankly, of everything she said last night, this was the part I was least convinced about being the whole truth.

She has a lot of confidence that the football team is going to get a lot better next year, and referenced the youth, tough schedule, injuries and the difficulty of changing the culture as why we’re not good this year.

Along those lines, she specifically mentioned that consistency of discipline under Tedford had suffered (although she didn’t mention him by name in this regard). That “depending where you were on the depth chart” the rules would be enforced differently. I found that to be very troubling. I’d heard rumors of it, but when the AD is talking about it, that’s pretty hard to swallow. Similarly, she talked about how Dykes agrees with her on a core rule principle: “Don’t make a rule unless you’re willing to enforce it.”

Sometimes we get overly focused on Football, but it is Sandy’s job to look over the whole program and she pointed out a lot of the very good things happening. The swimming teams are top notch. Golf will very good again. She has a lot of hope for the basketball teams. The academics outside of Football and men’s basketball are very good.

She talked about the value of the athletics department to the University as a whole. She mentioned that sports are the “connective tissue” that keeps alumni connected to their school. Looping back to the night game topic, she mentioned that a big part of how it keeps alumni connected is by getting them on campus frequently. That doesn’t happen as meaningfully when walking in and out of the stadium after the sun goes down (my language here).

Overall, I found the talk to be very worth attending and gave me some renewed confidence in what the athletic department as a whole is doing. Sandy has a very difficult job and seems to have the right goals in mind. Does she always meet them? No. But seems to be doing a better than acceptable job in the attempt.

Finally, one conclusion I walked away with was how “distracting” the building projects have been for the department as a whole. Sandy came to us from Notre Dame where she was the associate AD in charge of their building projects. I’m sure that means she was pretty hands on with the new training center and the stadium renovation. It led me to wonder if perhaps a side effect is that some of the other things, like making sure academics were top-notch, may have paid a penalty. One can only have so many priorities. The result is that some things that may have atrophied, will be coming back strong now that the building projects are complete.

9 Responses to “
Heard Sandy speak last night ”

I’m not sure how the late kickoff times affect recruiting… BUT a couple of things to point out:
– If the game starts after 7pm EST, it ain’t making it onto SportsCenter
– If the game starts after 10pm EST, it ain’t being watched by anyone east of the Mississippi.
– If the game is on the PAC-12 network, it ain’t being watched by anyone at a sports bar anywhere in the country. Because every sports bar carried DirecTV (for the NFL Sunday Ticket).

This quote is telling and disturbing at the same time. Kline is going to have no choice but to transfer if he wants a shot to be a starter. No matter how bad Goff stinks it up everyone’s all-in on him and we’re going to sink and swim with him.

I can’t see how anyone could watch how down Goff is at the post-game conferences and ever expects that he can be half the leader that Kline is, but I guess practice performance trumps all.

DJ, there was both a typo and you mis-read that comment. The proper sentence would have been “Golf will BE very good again.”

So I missed typing the word “be” but you missed the GOLF part. AKA, the sport with a small dimpled white ball and long metal sticks with a slanted head on the end… not the quarterback named Goff. Didn’t you notice the rest of that bullet was about other sports?

But to comment on Goff vs. Kline. The reality is that none of us know. I’ve been around long enough to hear about who was and wasn’t our savior for decades now. Sometimes the public consensus was right, but just as often it was wrong. Remember when Riley was the future? Or if you really want to be terrified, go back to early 2005 and read about Ayoob our savior. Heck, even in 2006 after Longshore had a rough first game in Tennessee, the calls to bring Ayoob were huge.

We’ve seen Kline play enough now to have some sense of him and he’s no savior. He has potential, but he’s shown nothing to suggest he’s obviously better than Goff nor that the team would be doing any better with him behind center. Frankly, despite Goff’s struggles, I still see more talent/potential in him.

Nevertheless, I think the competition is healthy and if Kline does surpass Goff, then he should start.

I agree that there has been a ton of great things happening in Cal sports in general. Barbour has a lot to be proud of. That being said, the flagship program is pretty much the worst team in major conference college football so far this year, the stadium finances are a mess, and we officially have the worst graduation rate in all of college football. As a Cal alum who worked his a*ss off to get a degree that last fact just disgusts me and is completely and utterly unforgivable. It’s a horrible black stain on this university and someone has to pay the price for it. Was Tedford the price? I don’t know. But things have to get better sooner (like next year) or Sandy has to go.

I’d like to say it can’t get any worse for the football team but this year has taught me that it can always get worse.

I hear you joshiemac. There’s no doubt the academics are on her watch as are the stadium finances. However, all it takes is another uptick in the football team and the finances will get a lot better, so it’s too early to write her off on that front. Also, the Dykes decision is what will make or break her (in part because of the finances). The program is allowed one really bad year in the transition. Next year is when her seat will get warm.

Also, I’ve always been of the belief that it matters less who is responsible for something than the sum of their intentions and their ability to fix the problem. Now, responsibility often is a strong indicator of their ability to fix, so it’s not that looking at the past is irrelevant. But at this moment I’m inclined to believe Barbour can for sure fix the academic mess (in fact it’s already 90% fixed, it just isn’t showing up on paper yet) and will also fix the finances if the football team rebounds.

However, her ability to pick a good football head coach to deliver the rebound is very much in question.

I think it’s pretty obvious she did not pick the right coach for a rebound. Dykes is supposed to be a guru of offense but it’s clear he can’t handle Pac 12 defenses. This dink and dunk stuff is way too easy to scheme against when you have the athletes. Goff doesn’t have the touch on the long ball to keep Ds honest. Yes, we played better against Arizona. But is that really our measuring stick now? Is that how low this program has fallen? We hope to be competitive against a horrible Arizona team? Almost every great first year coach has some sort of signature win, some sort of momentum builder. The Dykes regime has basically been the opposite of momentum. Good luck recruiting with this record. Yes we still have a few games to play so we’ll see what happens. But this program is pretty much in a death spiral and I put some of that blame on Dykes. All of the blame of hiring Dykes goes on Barbour. I hate to be so negative about the Bears and come of sounding like some ranting fool on Bear Insider but I have to call it like I see it. This program hit rock bottom with Tedford. Amazingly, it got much worse with Dykes. It takes a perverse skill set to make that happen.

You may very well be right Joshiemac. As I said while recording my OTRH podcast last night, I often feel like I’m watching an amateur coaching staff out there. There are all sorts of simple things that aren’t being coached, play-calling that is very simple-minded, etc..

However, at the same time, or perhaps saying the same thing a different more positive way, it feels like the coaching staff is on a massively steep learning curve, but they DO seem to be learning. The defense has improved dramatically, as has the offensive line. The play-calling in the 2nd half was MUCH better than the first. It’s ridiculous these improvements are just starting to show up in game NINE, but they’re there.

So I guess I’m keeping an open mind and fighting the very troubling doubts from overwhelming my thoughts. Next season we will know for sure and there’s no changes that are going to be made between now and then, so there is no reason to torture ourselves in the mean time.

Yes, the improvement on the D side of the ball has been encouraging. Sadly, it’s been paired with a complete regression on O. I don’t think Goff is that good. He has bad touch on the long ball, he’s bad at his reads, and he has a bad case of happy feet in the pocket. Our O line was playing better yesterday but Goff still acted like he had no time to throw. I guess he’s tramautized by the way the O line has been playing before this game and who could blame him. Basically, Goff has a long way to go to become and upper level PAC 12 QB, meaningless stats nonwithstanding. He feels like yet another in a long line of hyped but ultimately futile Cal Qbs. But I digress, basically I just think this coaching staff is not up to the challenges of today’s PAC 12. Dykes isn’t going anywhere before 2015 at the earliest, so we are kind of stuck with him. But I fear the decision to bring him has banished the program to a decade or more in the abyss of 2-3 win seasons. And I’m basing that on the fact that so far this is the mostly poorly coached team I’ve seen in my many years of following the Bears. Barbour made the decision to bring in Dykes, so it’s on her.